Ride London 2019 anyone?

fenix

How very mean spirited of you. Presumably you'd wave off the air ambulance or the RNLI out of principle in an emergency ?

kingstongraham

meursault wrote:

Fenix wrote:

meursault wrote:

Why not?

Because when an ordinary person see's those salaries, they ask the question, of how much of the donation goes to the charity? .009% hmmm don't think I'll bother then.

You're making stuff up aren't you ? What charity are you talking about there ? Do you give to charity yourself ?

I don't give to charity, because I don't want to fund CEO's on 162k a year. If I have to explain why this not very intelligent, the discussion isn't going to go anywhere.

I've done my why capitalism is stupid on the internet. It's futile.

Before all you capitalist apologists start typing, yes, it's the best and only system possible, yes, yes, yawn, I get it.

You don't give to any charities because some of them have a CEO on £162k?

meursault

Fenix wrote:

How very mean spirited of you. Presumably you'd wave off the air ambulance or the RNLI out of principle in an emergency ?

No, I would expect them to be funded from my NHS or tax contributions (Once I'd hung the nhs directors and pharma ceo's from lamp posts obviously)

meursault

KingstonGraham wrote:

meursault wrote:

Fenix wrote:

meursault wrote:

Why not?

Because when an ordinary person see's those salaries, they ask the question, of how much of the donation goes to the charity? .009% hmmm don't think I'll bother then.

You're making stuff up aren't you ? What charity are you talking about there ? Do you give to charity yourself ?

I don't give to charity, because I don't want to fund CEO's on 162k a year. If I have to explain why this not very intelligent, the discussion isn't going to go anywhere.

I've done my why capitalism is stupid on the internet. It's futile.

Before all you capitalist apologists start typing, yes, it's the best and only system possible, yes, yes, yawn, I get it.

You don't give to any charities because some of them have a CEO on £162k?

Lol, you think the RNLI is the only example. Geez I'm banging my head against a wall.

slowbike

meursault wrote:

Shirley Basso wrote:

In whose opinion should it be the minimum possible income? They may be stepping down from a 250K role and have a mortgage to pay.

Rnli by its nature is a pretty expensive charity to run, and needs someone with excellent operational skills, not the person willing to accept the lowest salary.

Then don't step down.

Is there no-one else who could do the job for a minimum salary or give their time for nothing. Is this not the definition of charity?

well - this is what Charities have to justify isn't it - RNLI is an easy example as they are a massive organisation with huge overheads but similarly huge income (more than they can spend I think) - they don't just pay 162k to a CEO, they have loads of staff - including marketing - they design & build craft in-house where other countries buy commercial vessels & they have a number of paid positions on station too - I assume where they feel it's nescersary to buy the experience and availability.
Does that make them a business rather than charity? Well - there's no profits being distributed - it all goes into the expenses of the entity.

harry-s

Fenix wrote:

The actual organisation is a charity Harry. So they make a profit from the ride and also charge other charities to have places on the ride.

https://www.lmct.org.uk/

Since its founding in 1981, The Trust has awarded in excess of £70 million to more than 1,250 projects in London and beyond.

So your thoughts on not much if any making it to the charity is wrong.

Fair enough, that's good to know.

I think there's a general mistrust of a lot of charities these days, there's a (perceived) grey area between profit making organisations hiding behind 'charity' focussed marketing, and the real deal. Certainly with RL100 you get the impression they're trying to wring the last penny out of everyone, with 'team' kit, training plans etc and a lot of third party advertising. For me, it's too hard core commercial for a charity. You could argue that if it gets results, then 'who cares', and I get that, but it's not exactly in the spirit of charity.

Back to the OP, no I won't be entering RL100 2019. The London Marathon works well, but I don't think the concept transfers well to a bike ride. The course isn't great, the road surfaces mostly appalling, and I have doubts about the safety of the ride.

BikerGroveish

Harry-S wrote:

Back to the OP, no I won't be entering RL100 2019. The London Marathon works well, but I don't think the concept transfers well to a bike ride. The course isn't great, the road surfaces mostly appalling, and I have doubts about the safety of the ride.

Those are all very valid points. Maybe they need to think about varying bits of the course and mitigating and reducing some of the risks.

shirley_basso

I'm all for more equality but meursault's opinions are ramblings of a lunatic.

How does someone expect to get relevant work experience unless paid for it? Who ever gets to the time in their life where they can a) work for free and b) be competent enough to be CEO equivalent?

meursault

Shirley Basso wrote:

I'm all for more equality but meursault's opinions are ramblings of a lunatic.

How does someone expect to get relevant work experience unless paid for it? Who ever gets to the time in their life where they can a) work for free and b) be competent enough to be CEO equivalent?

shirley_basso

Not quite. I can't see any circumstances in which the CEO is willing to work for nothing and be the best person for the job in any industry.

dannbodge

I'm not going for it this year.
Waste of my time and effort to sit and fill the form when I won't get a place anyway.

cgfw201

A few random RNLI stats for you
- Every day they save an average of 25 people in the UK
- London is their busiest area (inc. Thames)
- It costs £500k a day to keep the operation running, with each rescue costing around £10k
- They pay the CEO to organise the company to be able to do the above. It takes a lot of paid professionals to keep a business like that running and saving lives every day.

PS. No, not signing up for Ride London. Don't understand the appeal.

shirley_basso

well why should they be paid? If they don't want to do it for free perhaps they should be doing something else? Managing £180m UK wide business and saving lives should be the folly of a volunteer not some professional, experienced CEO.

slowbike

cgfw201 wrote:

A few random RNLI stats for you
- Every day they save an average of 25 people in the UK
- London is their busiest area (inc. Thames)
- It costs £500k a day to keep the operation running, with each rescue costing around £10k
- They pay the CEO to organise the company to be able to do the above. It takes a lot of paid professionals to keep a business like that running and saving lives every day.

I'm fortunate enough not to have needed them - yet - but I do appreciate the volunteers being on call ready to go out in just about any weather.

There are quite a number of independent lifeboat stations around (eg http://gafirs.org.uk/)- it's not all the RNLI - but you do wonder the cost effectiveness of both the individual and the national organisations. I think the individual stations can struggle for funding when folk just give to the RNLI thinking it covers everything.

fenix

I've not come across any independent lifeboats. I guess the RNLI can't be everywhere and if a community wants a lifeboat then they may have to fund it themselves.

shirley_basso

Slowbike wrote:

cgfw201 wrote:

A few random RNLI stats for you
- Every day they save an average of 25 people in the UK
- London is their busiest area (inc. Thames)
- It costs £500k a day to keep the operation running, with each rescue costing around £10k
- They pay the CEO to organise the company to be able to do the above. It takes a lot of paid professionals to keep a business like that running and saving lives every day.

I'm fortunate enough not to have needed them - yet - but I do appreciate the volunteers being on call ready to go out in just about any weather.

There are quite a number of independent lifeboat stations around (eg http://gafirs.org.uk/)- it's not all the RNLI - but you do wonder the cost effectiveness of both the individual and the national organisations. I think the individual stations can struggle for funding when folk just give to the RNLI thinking it covers everything.

This has been a major issue for many military charities due to the success of Help for Heroes. People give to this charity and as a result many others have suffered, particularly the associated benevolent trusts of each service arm. I think H4H actually passes on considerable donations to these charities which does in itself cause issues as the person who donated the money chose that charity and cause, and H4H then decide the money is better spent elsewhere. A grey area.

In general I do disagree that charities such as H4H should be building infrastructure for wounded veterans. Without question this should be the duty of the government.

fenix

I guess it also doesn't help that Meursault can happily quote b*llox about the charities just being set up for the good of their CEO. How many people (DM readers) just see that and are quite happy to not give to charity as it justifies their tightfisted beliefs ?

shirley_basso

I'm sure some charities are set up for a strong degree of benefit of the CEOs, all systems will have an element of abuse. Look at Livestrong as an example of people somewhat taking the piss.

ultrastapler

I've entered again. Previously done 2016 and this year.

For me the appeal is the closed roads. If I'm paying to enter an event, then offering something special compared to every other Sunday ride is essential and this ticks that box and is close to where I live.

Ben6899

Entered. It's 10mins across the capital from my front door and the roads are closed. Oh and it's a bike ride... I tend to be happy on my bike.

BikerGroveish

I’ve entered the ballot. It sounds like a good days riding and it’s mostly using roads I used to ride regularly. I’d like to be able to ride through the Limehouse link tunnel and up the A12 and A4 to Hammersmith with no cars around just for the experience of it.

essexian

I've entered after doing the 46 miler this year, partly so that I can try to finish it without a flat rear wheel.

As to charities.... I work for one of the largest in the UK. We employ 800 people and no doubt our CEO is on over £100 000 pa. Me, I am on £35K a year but if I was in private practice, I could easily earn twice that but frankly, I don't want to as I would rather work in the not for profit section.

So, why should my CEO earn so much....well, she controls a budget of over £110 million pa, we have 300 local offices and something like 25 000 volunteers. Also, we provide numerous services under contract from HM Government and local Councils. For every £1 we receive, we generate £5 in economic benefit. In addition, we have to adhere to a load of regulations which frankly, I could not get my head around if I tried (thankfully I don't need to as we have other experts for that) and indeed, we often assist Governments of all colours to shape and improve legislation.... when they listen to us which the current mob tend not to.

So of course our CEO is worth the money. If you think you could run a charity which helped over 5 million people last year by selling a few cakes in a church hall on a Saturday afternoon with someone keeping tabs in an exercise book, then I am sorry but you can't. Of course the Government could take the services we provide in house but seeing how Government departments have had their budgets cut year on year (we have lost something like 20% of our funding over the last 5 years: we have been very lucky it was so little) I doubt there would be much of a service left after a year or two.

Anyway, lets hope next year it doesn't rain.

shirley_basso

Thank you essexian. Maursault is deluded and that isn't me losing the arguement by resorting to insults. It appears to be true.

That isn't to say I disagree about the govt should be providing these services, but we are where we are (but not where we should be!)

stueys

Running a charity is a full time job that require a reasonable level of skill and competence. If the charities didn’t pay something akin to market rate then you’re limiting that job to the retired or independently wealthy. Which I suspect is a relatively small pool.....

philbar72

thought this was about RL100 or something.

i'll be ride along Marshalling again next year. its great to be able to give back to all the cyclists that can't be arsed with (or aren't competent enough to) changing a tube or putting their wheels back in correctly.

nice to see a marshall won it this year as well.

fenix

"won?"

BikerGroveish

Fenix wrote:

"won?"

It’s a race yeah for racy racers yeah and not a Sportive yeah.

BikerGroveish

Winning a Sportive. Now I’ve heard it all.

phreak

BikerGroveish wrote:

Winning a Sportive. Now I’ve heard it all.

To be fair, the course is probably more what most people associate with a bike race than the tedious criteriums that make up the majority of the actual racing scene in the UK. If you get into cycling watching the Tour or Giro and then the only races are an hour around an airfield somewhere, it's not really the same, is it?

BikerGroveish

phreak wrote:

BikerGroveish wrote:

Winning a Sportive. Now I’ve heard it all.

To be fair, the course is probably more what most people associate with a bike race than the tedious criteriums that make up the majority of the actual racing scene in the UK. If you get into cycling watching the Tour or Giro and then the only races are an hour around an airfield somewhere, it's not really the same, is it?

Yes and no. Crits are tedious. There are some stage races that aren’t classics or grand tours though. But the Ride London Surrey 100 is a Sportive which follows most of the course of a pro race. It isn’t a race so there’s nothing to win.